


Words

by Saturnite



Series: Eighty-Six'd [1]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 04:36:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8190341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saturnite/pseuds/Saturnite
Summary: Something short and simple to figure things out and get some sense of things.





	

She hated the adrenaline humming through her body.

The way her heart thundered in her chest. Her mind racing to make danger out of shadows. Steady hands quick to reload, now fumbling to open her canteen. The shock of the grenade rifle and shotgun echoing in her bones.

Something weighed heavy in her. A guilt for the dead dogs, scattered with the rest of the bodies downstairs. Both in her thoughts. Both joining the chase in her mind. 

They were Legion dogs. Still dogs. 

Dogs felt like whatever or wherever home was. A warm huddle of fur and quiet. Heads rubbing against hers and licks of assurance. Whistles and calls of names. 

Words and names were beginning to have meaning again. Night, shroud. Mother, caretaker. Dog, feed. Legion. 

Legion felt empty, exhausting, and bitter. Same as she felt after drinking the vial she looted from the heaps of red outside. It’s taste still on her tongue and an unknown anger still in her blood.

Words didn’t all feel hollow but, she still struggled. There were some she couldn’t find. Lost in the jumble of languages she didn’t know where she picked up. 

The thick book in her hands held some she was familiar with. Jargon and long lettered words that meant nothing when you had Vipers at your neck. 

Her hands stilled but, her mind still raced. She sunk deeper into the chair, feet propped on the desk. Terminal blinked green as she flipped to another page. She could read English, not sure about any others. Writing came scratched and scrambled but good enough. Computers came to her faster than a lockpick. The lights and patterns giving some strange comfort.

She knew a little of everything. Enough to survive and keep her moving and going. Couldn’t fix the Eye-bot yet but, nothing a few spare parts couldn't fix.

It took a showdown, ambushes, a very mad radscorpion, and a grenade packed rescue to get a name. Her name. A name that felt foreign as she wrote it on the back of a playing card. Too short to be an actual name. Might be an alias. She felt she was an alias type of person considering there was something shady about the courier that dropped the job.

Or maybe Six just had a nicer ring to it. Short, simple, and only a single digit to write. 6.

“What was I doing again?” she glanced over to her bag and frowned.  
Glasses.

The coyote’s beading eyes came to focus. Not sure why she picked it off the prick. Pride?

No. Pride was celebrating a warm meal with everyone in Goodsprings. A meal that brought an ache to her heart and a set of tears that she couldn’t make sense of. It wouldn’t stop and Trudy’s embrace made it worse. They called it homesickness. Six accepted it.

It hadn’t been the only emotion that she couldn’t attach a word to. She couldn’t understand the way her blood boiled while asking for her murderers or at being tricked into a gecko’s nest. The giddy feel that forced a lopsided grin out at the feel of Sunny’s hands adjusting her aim or hearing Ringo’s laugh as they played Caravan.

The coyote head filled her with something but that she could only describe as finishing a meal. But what was she hungry for?

“Not again,” Six sighed. 

She knew there was something wrong. Forgetting little details. Parts of conversations. Or she just wasn’t a good listener.

A quick glance to her blessing and saving grace told her that passed Nipton, her next stop was Novac. A long walk by the looks of it and not enough sun. Her heavy bag and near empty reserve of caps called her to the NCR trading post.

Packing things away, she stretched and winced at her fresh wounds and bruises. NCR held the same emptiness and bitterness as the Legion. But none of the rage that fogged her mind and pulled the trigger.

Six didn’t like the feel of adrenaline. The recklessness it threw her into. The numb sore it left behind. The racing mind it never took.

Maybe the bullet did more than take her past. The scar it left added to a collection she was still discovering. Maybe it just aggravated a problem already there.

All she knew was that there was a snake needing a bullet and a delivery to finish.


End file.
